Debt. Taxes. Hell for YOUR family. Accidental Tory ‘truth in advertising’. #GE17

The Tories have tried to launch a new campaign poster – but appear to have committed the campaigning equivalent of a ‘Freudian slip’:

A ‘Freudian slip’ is where someone accidentally tells a truth they would rather keep secret – and this would definitely apply here.

Family hell

Since 2010, the Tories have indeed created a hell for huge numbers of families:

• their cuts have disproportionately affected women and children
• numbers of homeless familes and children have soared, as this graphic from Christmas 2016 showed:

  

• the number of children living in poverty has rocketed to an incredible four million – almost one third of the UK’s children
• teachers report a huge increase in the number of children arriving at school too hungry to study – a situation that has become so bad that many teachers are buying food for their pupils out of their own pocket

And… and… and. Life for the majority of families in this country has become harder and or many it has become desperate.

Debt

Because of the huge increase in poverty and the stagnation of wages, which have still not returned to pre-crash levels (and won’t for another five years if the Tories’ policies remain in place), household debt has grown exponentially.

But it’s the Tories’ claim to ‘economic competence’ that the campaign poster brings to mind. That claim is an outright lie: as Jeremy Corbyn has pointed out in Prime Minister’s Questions, the Tories have borrowed more since 2010 than every Labour government in history.

Not only that, but they’ve done it through sheer incompetence. Labour’s spending plans are to invest – mostly funded through cancelling tax cuts for the richest. But if they borrow it will be for investment – investment that grows the economy and, via the ‘multiplier effect‘, will grow the economy by around £1.70 for every government pound spent.

The Tories, by contrast, have created debt by cutting – by cutting spending, they have depressed the UK economy (all the while calling it strong). By their economic INcompetence they have applied the ‘multiplier effect’ in reverse, shrinking the economy and, therefore, tax revenue – and therefore increasing debt to astonishing levels in the trillions of pounds.

Taxes

The Tories claim to be the party of low taxes – but this only applies if you’re very rich. Cuts in inheritance tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax benefit big corporations and hugely rich individuals.

But by increasing the rate of VAT to 20%, for example, they put a disproportionate burden on the poorest.

Labour’s campaign headline “For the many, not the few” is clear – and accurate. The Tories’ would be accurate if it was “For the few, not the many”.

But “Debt. Taxes. Hell for your family” represents some Tory ‘truth in advertising’ at last.

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